Honda R&D Selects think3 Technology

think3, a supplier of industrial design and product development solutions, has been selected to work with Honda R&D Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Honda Motor Co. which serves as Honda’s primary research and development organization.
With headquarters in Cincinnati and offices throughout Europe, Asia and North America, privately held think3 works with more than 5,000 mid-sized manufacturers worldwide.
think3’s advanced Research and Development Group, based in Aix-en-Provence, France, is comprised of 10 experts who focus exclusively on developing next generation ID technology with leading university and industrial development partners.
“Working side by side with the design scientists at Honda R&D is the one of the most challenging and exciting periods of my career in computer aided industrial design,” said Alain Massabo, vice president of advanced R&D at think3 and a 35-year veteran to the computer-aided design industry.
think3 holds an annual conference for the Industrial Designers Society of America. Last year, Erik Buell chairman and chief technical officer of Buell Motorcycle Company, described the unique challenges of designing motorcycles, and how he has implemented design and technology applications from think3.
think3’s industrial design tools were used in the development of the 2006 Buell Ulysses. Buell said think3 facilitated the design process by enabling work to be done in a multi-CAD environment. Additionally, key parts of the Ulysses were designed and engineered from start to finish using think3 CAD capabilities, and every new component of the bike was solid-modeled using think3 technology.
According to Buell, the key benefits of using think3 technology included the ability to read any legacy data; hybrid surface and solid modeling capabilities; and improved design to manufacturability – having the flexibility of doing iterative designs without losing data, time or design intent through manufacturing.